Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Pity the poor girls in white,’ Fr Duddleswell protested, ‘who are pushing their wheel barrows up the aisle, trying to hide their bump with a bouquet.’

  ‘Pity them I do indeed, Charles, from my heart. Yet that has always been the way of the world, has it not? Ever since the caveman dragged his mate home with him to add to the population.’

  Fr Duddleswell was showing signs of exasperation. ‘I tell you, Donal, things are far worse now than in our day and generation. There are even girls – God forgive me for mentioning it at this grand meal you have prepared for us …’

  ‘Proceed,’ the doctor said, with a gallant wave of his hand.

  ‘There are girls approaching the altar rails, Father Neil will confirm it, with blouses that button up round their toes.’

  Dr Daley smiled. ‘The unlucky dip, as Seamus Mahoney calls it.’

  ‘Indeed. And ’tis not their holy medals they’re displaying.’

  ‘Shameless as a herd of cows,’ Dr Daley muttered impishly.

  ‘’Tis hard to tell whether they are wanting to take the Holy Sacrament or a hot bath.’

  Dr Daley tried soothing him. ‘Necklines are like the pound, Charles, up one day and plunging the next. It doesn’t signify. Besides, as you always say yourself, the remedy is simple.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘If only the colleens joined their hands they’d find it easy to join their knees.’

  ‘’Twas better in the old days,’ Fr Duddleswell snorted, ‘when men and women sat on opposite sides of the chapel.’

  ‘But, Charles,’ Dr Daley countered, ‘didn’t that holy arrangement leave everybody cross-eyed?’

  Fr Duddleswell thrust his cheese plate away from him like temptation. ‘I tell you, these are terrible days. I am marrying a couple one week and christening their offspring the next.

  ‘Lucky for you a girl’s never calved down the aisle.’

  ‘I have sometimes wondered if the Matron of Honour is not really a midwife in disguise.’ Fr Duddleswell shook his head vigorously. ‘Sex is sweet to drink all right but bitter to pay for.’

  ‘Like something else I know,’ Dr Daley said, with a wink in my direction. ‘I’ll just fetch myself a drop of oil to keep the flame alive.’

  He crossed to his cupboard.

  ‘God,’ he cried, ‘the cupboard is bare.’

  ‘You are like the foolish virgins, Doctor,’ I said. ‘No oil for your lamp.’

  Fr Duddleswell said grumpily, ‘They can’t have been too foolish if they were still virgins.’

  Back home, I took the opportunity of broaching a topic that was occupying my mind.

  ‘Father, would you mind if I started a family group in the parish here?’

  Fr Duddleswell hadn’t heard of Family Groups, even though several nearby parishes had been running them successfully for months.

  I explained that the priest encourages couples, usually young couples, to get together to discuss common family problems in a supportive atmosphere.

  ‘Discussion, Father Neil?’ I nodded. ‘Don’t you realize that explanation kills the pig? Besides, Catholics already know the Church’s teaching on these matters.’

  ‘But there are ticklish problems of relationship,’ I dared to say. ‘Problems about children, housing, neighbours, paying the rent.’

  ‘There is no Catholic way of paying the rent, lad.’

  ‘Then there jolly well ought to be,’ I retorted.

  ‘God help us,’ he grumbled, still smarting over Dr Daley’s alarmingly liberal views. ‘I tried that sort of thing once when I was a young priest.’

  ‘I’m surprised you can remember that far back.’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘Your failures,’ I said, blazing, ‘are hardly a blueprint for my career.’

  ‘Are they not?’

  ‘No. There isn’t any future in the past.’

  ‘No future in the past,’ he echoed mockingly. ‘Who is this riddler in our midst: Lewis Carroll, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf?’

  ‘It isn’t enough,’ I said, calming down, ‘to tell people the Church’s teaching on marriage. They have to find things out for themselves.’

  He relaxed and smiled. ‘Like curates, eh?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, stiff-lipped again.

  ‘So be it, Father Neil. You can start next week.’

  This took the wind out of my sails. ‘You mean it, Father? You’re not upset or anything like that?’

  He shook his head benignly. ‘How do we learn, Father Neil, except by our mistakes?’

  I announced from the pulpit on Sunday that the first Family Group would meet at St Jude’s on Thursday evening, 7.30 – 8.30. Engaged couples as well as married couples were welcome. Future meetings would be held in the homes of the participants, the host family providing light refreshments.

  On Wednesday, Fr Duddleswell roped in my first couple. Batty Holohan and Dympna Tutty, he told me, were soon to be wed ‘after a whirlwind Irish courtship of three years’ and might benefit from contact with experienced married people.

  I thanked him warmly. I had even more cause for gratitude the next evening. Batty and Dympna were the only couple to turn up to the meeting in the presbytery parlour.

  ‘Well,’ I said, glancing at my watch and seeing we were already a quarter of an hour late, ‘time to get started.’

  Batty sat down awkwardly. He had red hair closely cropped so it looked as if his head was enclosed in a rusty saucepan. He had red eyebrows and freckles. He was about forty.

  Dympna wasn’t much younger. She was dark, Latin-looking, with abnormally large hands which she didn’t know what to do with.

  ‘If any other couples arrive,’ I said breezily, ‘they can join in.’

  ‘Suits us,’ Batty said.

  ‘Father Duddleswell tells me, Batty, that you are engaged.’

  Batty nodded morosely. ‘So is Dympna. Three year, Father.’

  ‘And you are thinking of getting married.’

  Dympna reached for her handkerchief. Inspired by Fr Duddleswell’s recent comments, I was struck by the ungentlemanly thought that Dympna was pregnant and they were trying to find a way to say so.

  ‘Is there any particular problem you’d care to talk about?’

  Dympna gulped painfully, increasing my suspicions. ‘There is, Father.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, gesturing with my hands to indicate they were free to bring anything up.

  I waited for half a minute but in vain.

  ‘You said you wanted to discuss a particular problem.’

  Batty nodded but still said nothing. I realized I was going to have to conduct the conversation on the lines of confession.

  ‘Is it about money?’ I said, breaking the ice gently.

  The couple shook their heads.

  ‘A house?’

  ‘We have a bungalow lined up,’ Batty said.

  Eighteen questions to go. To myself: Damn it, I won’t beat about the bush. I said, ‘It’s about a baby, isn’t it?’

  They nodded and Batty mumbled, ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  I put on my most sympathetic mask. ‘When is the little one due?’

  ‘Never,’ Batty said hoarsely.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘That’s right, Father,’ Batty confirmed, hanging his head.

  What are they trying to tell me? I asked myself. Have they been at it out of wedlock and had no success? And do they think you can’t get married unless a baby is on the way? They are peasant people, certainly.

  ‘It’s quite customary to get married before the baby is due,’ I remarked hesitantly.

  They gave me an odd look. I hadn’t got it right yet.

  I scratched my nose. ‘Have you tried and, um, failed?’

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Dympna said, blushing madly.

  Batty Holohan screwed up his courage. ‘Dympna can’t, Father.’

  ‘She knows without trying?’ I asked.

  Dympna lifted her head. ‘I l
ove Batty very much, Father. He knows that. But the other thing.’ She shuddered.

  I was quite shaken by this revelation. I explained that what distinguishes marriage from every other form of relationship is its physical basis. It’s a contract between a. man and a woman by which they take on mutual bodily rights and duties. To approach the altar while withholding from the other partner the right to sex would invalidate the contract just as certainly as if one partner ‘married’ on a temporary basis or with the determination to exclude children for good by means of contraception.

  ‘It would be like trying to play golf,’ I said in summary, ‘without a ball.’

  ‘You mean, Father,’ Batty said wretchedly, ‘we can’t have the words said over us, after all,’ and Dympna, clutching at Batty’s hand, said, ‘I can’t be buried with his people.’

  ‘It says in the Bible that in marriage a man and a woman become one flesh. Without that –’ I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘We’ve been so close,’ Dympna said, weeping, ‘and now we’ve got to part. After saving up all these years.’

  ‘You can still be friends,’ I said gently.

  ‘Ah, it wouldn’t be fair to Batty being just friends.’

  I felt like saying that I wasn’t preventing them being something more to each other.

  As I showed them to the door, Batty said to Dympna, ‘Come on, love, let’s go into church to say the rosary.’

  I was deeply upset. I was also annoyed. Annoyed with Fr Duddleswell for arranging to marry a couple when he hadn’t bothered to make sure they fulfilled a basic condition.

  Father D’s an old fuddy-duddy, I fumed inwardly. He’s past it.

  I banged on his door and stamped in. He was at his desk, writing. He looked up.

  ‘Your meeting is over already, Father Neil?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well?’

  I gave him a brief, fiery resume, ending with Batty’s remark about them not being able to marry, after all.

  ‘You did not let them go home on that note, Father Neil?’

  ‘Of course not. I consoled them as best I could.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “consoled them”? You surely did not tell them they’d have to call the wedding off.’

  ‘I didn’t need to. They realized that themselves.’

  ‘Dear God,’ he cried, rising from his chair in a panic, ‘you are as green as unripe corn.’

  ‘Look, Father, I know the theology of marriage. I’m surprised you don’t.’

  ‘Get your coat on,’ he thundered, ‘and fetch that poor young couple back here this instant.’

  ‘They’re in church,’ I told him.

  He disappeared and in a few moments came back with Batty and Dympna, both of them crying. Fr Duddleswell looked at me grimly as if to say, See what you have done.

  This, I thought, I must watch. If only to correct any further bloomer the old bloke makes.

  ‘Sit yourself down, Dympna. You, too, Batty. There seems to have been a wee misunderstanding hereabouts.’

  The couple gradually composed themselves.

  ‘Now,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Fr Boyd here tells me you are about to enter a most unusual and edifying marriage covenant.’

  I was in turmoil. Why was he leading them up the garden?

  ‘Father Boyd,’ Batty began, ‘he said –’

  ‘Father Boyd,’ Fr Duddleswell took up, ‘was giving a general scholarly analysis of the theology of marriage. But yours is a special case.’

  ‘Is it, Father?’ Dympna asked, for the first time hopeful.

  ‘Oh, ’tis indeed. Y’see, Dympna, you and Batty are marrying in exactly the same way as our Blessed Lady and St Joseph.’

  I was as startled as Dympna was overjoyed.

  ‘The fact is,’ Fr Duddleswell went on, studiously avoiding my gaze, ‘our Lady and St Joseph were genuinely husband and wife even though there was no physical side to their marriage.’

  ‘So they were,’ Dympna murmured brightly.

  ‘Of course,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘they handed over to each other the right of bodily communion but they vowed at the same time not to exercise this right.’

  ‘That’s what happened, then,’ Batty said, almost whistling.

  ‘Not, Batty and Dympna, that I’d advise the pair of you to make a permanent vow. A temporary one renewed at the beginning of each calendar month is all that is required.’

  Oh God, I admitted to myself, the old chap’s right again. I had overlooked the possibility of a virginal marriage. I had applied to sex in marriage the generally sound Catholic principle that everything is forbidden until it is compulsory.

  ‘Does that suit you, Batty?’

  Batty nodded briskly.

  ‘And yourself, Dympna?’

  Dympna smiled her agreement.

  ‘But remember, me dear young couple, that if at any time you change your mind, you have only to come and see me or give me a tinkle on the telephone.’

  ‘We won’t be changing our mind, Father,’ Dympna said for the pair of them.

  ‘If you do, you have only to say the word and I will dispense you immediately. I would have to give you a stiff penance to compensate, mind.’

  ‘Of course,’ Batty said, perhaps wondering what penance could be tougher than the one he’d got.

  ‘’Tis a very wicked and heinous sin to break your vow without my permission, very wicked.’

  This was laying it on thick. I couldn’t see why.

  ‘Have you arranged your honeymoon, Batty?’

  ‘We’re flying to Spain for a fortnight, Father.’

  ‘I could not think of a more suitable place,’ Fr Duddleswell said, as he showed the happy pair to the door. ‘I will start calling you next Sunday. And may you, Dympna, hear a hen sneeze on your wedding morn.’

  This, I took it, was an Irish sign of good luck.

  On his return, I apologized. Seeing me crushed, he was content to say, ‘Did you not know, lad, that the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux began their married life with that same vow?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  He fluttered his eyelids mischievously. ‘And St Thérèse, you will recall, was the last of their thirteenth children.’

  I laughed with relief.

  ‘Will you do me one last favour, Father Neil? Promise you will not use your Family Group to split up any more happy couples.’

  Another announcement was made at all the Masses on the following Sunday. On Thursday evening, I furtively looked through my bedroom window, praying no one would put in an appearance.

  At 7.35, Freddie Williams drove up in the Co-op hearse. I took no notice because Freddie was a non-Catholic. Until I heard his voice in the hall.

  ‘I’ve come for the Family Group, Mrs Pring.’

  In the parlour, the sort of room Freddie and I were accustomed to meet in, he explained that he had received notification of these meetings through the letter box. He drew out a piece of paper on which had been pasted words of varying typography cut out of a magazine. It told of weekly meetings at St Jude’s ‘for those unlucky in love’.

  ‘It’s like a spy thriller in the films, isn’t it, Father?’

  I nodded, glad that Freddie was having a bit of excitement in his life. ‘Who’s responsible, Mr Williams?’

  ‘I think I know. One of my pall-bearers is Eddie McEvoy.’

  Eddie was one of our parishioners. A bit of a wag. Not that he could have expected Freddie to take the note seriously.

  ‘How can you be sure it’s Eddie?’

  ‘Because I recognize the lettering. Bits and pieces from The Undertakers Journal.’ He added characteristically, ‘Always a very good read, Father.’

  ‘And you’re not annoyed?’

  ‘I’m rather pleased, really. Eddie McEvoy is shrewd enough to know a problem when he sees one.’

  ‘You and Mrs Williams, Mr Williams?’

  His long, thin face went even blacker than usual. ‘You guessed, Father.’

  I de
layed the start as long as I could, hoping that other customers would turn up and lend me support. None came. I’d have to go it alone.

  ‘There’s only one thing wrong with my marriage,’ Freddie began.

  ‘That’s encouraging,’ I said, wondering what he was doing, then, messing up my meeting.

  ‘My Doris and I don’t get on.’

  I coughed in embarrassment. ‘I don’t suppose you can pinpoint the time when the trouble began?’

  ‘I am tempted to say, Father, when all the guests had left. But I realize the rot had set in before then.’

  I put on a smile but even without looking in the mirror I felt it didn’t fit my face.

  ‘I was romantic once, Father, that’s why it hurts, you see. I bought a ticket for a dance.’ There was a flame in Freddie’s eye as he remembered. ‘And there was this gorgeous girl, light as a fairy on her feet, with long fair hair, lovelier than a groomed horse. My heart galloped after her, so to speak, like a Derby winner.’

  ‘You were romantic, Mr Williams, so you must have loved your Doris once.’

  ‘Oh, that was before I met my Doris. I was talking about Mavis Dowling. She eloped with a milkman. I never really liked my Doris.’

  I took a long breath. ‘Why did you, er, marry her, then?’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘You had to.’

  ‘She made me. Or, at least, her father did.’ Freddie looked as if the room had suddenly turned cold. ‘A hard man, he was. I don’t want to say anything nasty about Doris’s dad but that one was a real bugger.’

  I hadn’t realized that Freddie Williams had a family. ‘Do you have many children?’ I asked.

  ‘None.’

  I worked it out that either Doris had duped him or the infant had died. Seeing my puzzled expression, he explained.

  ‘Doris’s dad owned the Funeral Service, Father.’

  ‘Ah.’ I still was none the wiser.

  ‘I had a broad pair of shoulders on me – the best shape for coffins, too – but that was all. Depression years, they were. I hadn’t any prospects. Neither had Doris unless one of the pall-bearers took her on.’

  ‘And you were first choice?’

  Freddie hesitated before replying. ‘Not exactly. It wasn’t till her father took me aside for a word that I realized why my three colleagues, all long standing, had lately been thrown on the dole.’ He sniffed sadly. ‘They refused the ultimatum.’